Story Time

            Stories are a big deal for me and always have been. In many ways they defined my childhood and shaped my education. Hell, they were my education. Who cares about Geometry at thirteen? For me what was going on with the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings or with my favorite X-men was a lot more important. They were real to me. They were what I spent my time living and studying after the homework was done and the chores finished. And it's still where I like to spend my time now. 

            My introduction to stories started with movies, that unofficial god of the eighties. A time when it was okay to park your kid in front of the screen and let them soak in its comforting glow. I ate them up as a kid. Ghostbusters was then and is now, still my all time favorite film. It goes to a root belief of mine that sometimes great stories just happen. The right mixture of ingredients will merge and Bam! Lighting in a bottle.

            My childhood idea of the story and the hero was formed by a lot of those lightning strikes. Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Muppets,  the golden age of Arnold Schwarzeneggar, John MClane, Bill Murray and the rest of the Ghostbusters. All of those elements blending together, with the occasional helping hand from a Willow or a Batteries Not Included. It was a healthy mix of fantasy, macho heroics, and snarky comedy that fed straight into an adolescence formed by more traditional sources.

            I know that a lot of my ideas on heroic male characters are formed not so much by the comic books I would later read and identify with but more the Clint Eastwood westerns my dad would occasionally watch when I was little. He was primarily a classic sci-fi monster movie guy, but that did little for me. It was seeing Clint on our big wood frame television, impossibly cool and collected, two massive guns in hand as he would slowly advance on some snarling bad guy that formed once and for all my image of the unbeatable tough guy.
          

 

             Stories became the rhyme and beat of my daily life as a child. I would take my action figures through large intricately plotted battles and campaigns that would last for hours and require cutaways and pick-ups. Each battle was a story in and of itself and every hero had their own voice. Every new film was an adventure to be treasured. Saturday morning cartoons told stories that amplified my imaginations reach and introduced me to one of my other great loves, comic books. 

            The thing that I always try to keep in mind regarding the films or the comic books that I either love or loath is that it always comes down to the writing. True, gifted actors can elevate the writing of any film or play and amazing artists can make even the worst scripted comic book something to collect cherish but the things that really resonate with us come down to writing. It's the words, the actions, and the motivations of characters that strike a chord and of course the best of all worlds for me is a film based on a great novel or comic book with a truly gifted actor bringing to life a well adapted fictional character. In this instance the standouts for me are Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and Heath Ledger as the Joker in the Dark Knight. 
             Of course there are too many other great portrayals and adaptations to list. These are just the top two on my list and still in the end, it comes down to writing. We remember great writing. It gets inside and stays with us. We forget bad writing, as simple as that. When we read a badly written book or a badly written movie, we know that something is wrong with it. When it's really bad, we remember that it's bad but can't remember the details. All that we remember is that it was something we endured instead of something that caught us up and carried us away.

            That's what good stories do. That's why those moments from my childhood in front of the television watching the movies and moments that I'll always remember stand out. They carried me away with them and embedded in my consciousness. I suppose saying that they imprinted on me is the simplest way to state it. Once I found novels (a subject I'll address later) I was hooked. The world opened up and although it doesn't need to be stated, I found that I was only at the limits of my own imagination and that of the author I was trusting to take me on an adventure.

            It's dangerous stuff trusting a writer. When we commit ourselves to a film or a novel, or yes even a comic book, we're allowing the person that crafted the story to carry away for awhile. We're putting ourselves in their hands, trusting them to see us through the coming trials and dramas, never knowing what might happen. If they do things right, a truly gifted story teller can get your emotions in the palm of their hand. If that storyteller fails, they've let us down.
            Although I would later learn narrative structure, voice, diction, and numerous other writing terms and devices one of my primary beliefs was learned watching those cartoons and reading the comic books they were based upon. Stories are endlessly fascinating things that grow and change on their own. The cartoons were based on the comics but told their own unique stories. It's the same with adaptations of novels and comics to film and vice versa. The formats and structure are different or the content has to be changed. So characters receive subtle shifts in their original persona that create their own deviations on the story.
            I believe that stories are endless. Their may only be five root stories, or one, or however many want to claim and that's in many ways true. The root stories do not change and it is hard to find truly original works but they do still happen. Because our creativity is endless and the influences upon it ever changing. I can think of no better profession to be in honestly. But as big a fan as I am, I would think that.